Registering

If your cart currently requires a registration for customers to buy, then consider ditching it. Few industries will need to retain this information, and customers are often not willing to sign up to yet another site. If your product is not one that is often bought, then passwords will be lost, and you will possibly lose business to a site that doesn’t require registration. If you are using the sign in process to record the sales info for the customer as well as for your marketing data, consider implementing an express or guest checkout for those that want to skip it. Better yet, use Facebook Connect, it gives you more information about the customer than a static form, and the customer won’t have to remember yet another password.

Long Tedious Forms

Your form should ask for the bare minimum. Turning your shopping cart form into a mini (or not so mini) survey or questionnaire will definitely kill the sale; even having to scroll down to read the rest of the form can be irritating. Edit your form with a vengeance, and leave the market research for another time.

Errors and Validation

Many forms and shopping carts have fields which are required to move on to the next step, or to complete the purchase. This is necessary for things like getting the correct billing information and shipping address. One common practice is to put an asterisk next to each field required, but many times, these are tiny and can go unnoticed the first time around. Make the required sections obvious, and also if the customer hasn’t filled out the form correctly, don’t wipe the form clean so that they have to start all over again.

A best practice is to use a validation code so that the form doesn’t get spammed. These can vary from the simple (for example asking a question such as ‘What is 2 + 4?’) to the obscenely difficult to read phrases where the writing is curved or scrambled in a way that even human eyes can’t detect it. Use something simple like reCaptcha.

Upselling

Amazon does this in an almost non intrusive way, by listing “things people also bought when buying this item”. Don’t be tempted to add in pop up suggestions, asking people to pay for memberships or sending them to a page with other items they might like. At the checkout process, your sale is almost won; don’t turn them off by trying to force another item into the trolley, this works with candy at the supermarket, but rarely online.

The moral of this story, is to keep it simple – you’ve lured your customers in with online marketing, excellent content and a product that solves their problem; don’t make the decision hard for them once they are there. A good shopping experience should be an easy one, and a bad shopping cart or form can sour the sale as surely as a surly cashier or sales assistant can.

Let’s first look at how buyers learn about and eventually go on to buy our products and services.

The AIDA principle

This acronym essentially walks us through the sales process. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. A potential customer typically goes through these stages before buying:

Targeting prospects in the early buying stages.

In our paid search campaigns, we can target specific keywords around the Attention and Interest stages – and they’re significantly cheaper than words at the Action stage. Let’s look at the examples below:

Just bidding on these cheaper keywords isn’t enough, we need to connect with this person and educate them on why your product or service is best. We do this with persuasive ad copy, engaging content on our landing page such as videos, calculators, and case studies, and a strong call to action.

But I still need to target the buying keywords!

Yes, and this is true. We still need to target those customers ‘ready to buy’ but ideally, we should be spending some of our marketing budget on a more long term cost effective search engine optimisation strategy, boosting your site’s organic rankings, building trust with your audience and ultimately positioning yourself as the authority in your marketplace.

In an effort to make search richer, and more relevant to users three new search features have been announced:

1. Profiles in Google search.

This works in Instant, as well as normal search engine results. This is an easier way to connect with people you are looking for, as well as a quick link to those you are already connected with. For example, if you are searching for a friend in your Google Plus circles, your search box will auto-complete to your friend, rather than strangers with the same name.

As well as shortcuts to your friends, Instant will also auto-complete ‘prominent’ people on Google +, be it contributors and authors of Google’s Authorship program, or celebrities or other well known users.

2. People and Pages.

Searching for broad topics will now show prominent people in Google + on the right hand side of the results page, who frequently talk about, or are associated with the topic searched for. This means you can then connect with the people or communities who have similar interests.

3. Personal Results.

This will return more relevant search results to you via your friend’s recommendations, Google + posts and photos based on keywords in captions, comments or titles. Although this gives you a more personalised search, it will be more convenient for some searches more than others, and don’t worry – there is a link at the top of the results page so that you can revert to regular results without the personalisation. You can also permanently change to ‘regular’ results in your search settings.

This new breed of search has been named ‘Search plus Your World” and is being rolled out all over the English speaking world in the next few days. It brings together social networking and search all in one place, allowing you to find your own things on the web, as well as your posts, and friends posts and people you might like to meet.

For the future of internet marketing and SEO, it is a good time for businesses to incorporate a Google Plus page into their social repertoire to take advantage of these new search features.

Arguable the most talked about system right now is the iPhone’s Siri assistant. Charged with a sense of humour and revolutionary speech recognising technology, Siri seems to understand your queries in a more natural way than the keyword based rigidity of Google Voice Actions.

Is there much of a difference between Siri and Google Voice?

In the USA, Siri uses Google and Yelp for most of it’s main web based queries, sometimes returning a straight answer to your question, other times offering a search engine result page taken from Google or Yelp. These search results are local by default, for example if you ask Siri for somewhere good to eat, ‘she’ will know that this means restaurants, and will show you a selection in your area. This is yet another opportunity for businesses to optimise their local listings, both on Google Places, and other local ratings sites (For example, urbanspoon.com).

Comparing Google’s Voice Actions with Siri, they are fairly comparable, however Siri’s voice processing is much better at discerning the ‘meaning’ of what the user wants. Google’s voice app will also not make notes, but will compose emails and set reminders. As Siri becomes more popular (that is, if people adopt this technology long term) Google will no doubt rise to the challenge of beating Apple. In early December, Google bought a start-up company called ‘Clever Sense’ which uses an app called “Alfred” to help complete commands on the Android OS. It’s not even in Beta yet, but it is sure to have no shortage of beta testers once released.

What about this ‘sense of humour’ that Siri has?

As a cute addition to the database of Siri’s knowledge, the programmers have added a few humourous replies for when Siri is stumped or is asked something inappropriate. For example, asking Siri if she wants to take over the world gets the very specific answer: “Yes, someday in 8042”; creepily, she will direct you to the nearest swamp if you ask where the best place to bury a body is.  See http://www.sirifunny.com.

What will this mean for search?

For search and SEO purposes, not much will change for your website; however as local listings will take precedence more and more, it is essential to keep up to date with your Google Places reviews and information. If you do have a business that thrives on ratings, like a restaurant, make sure your reputation management is kept up to date, as the voice activated search technology evolves, information is sure to be drawn from multiple sources, however at the moment; even Siri is depending on Google for the bulk of her search queries.

How do your customers make the decision to buy from your or trust your advice? It would seem straightforward that the best would rank number one or two for the search terms that people enter, but does that logic hold once they visit your site? There are a few on page factors that might be SEO compliant, however may scare off potential customers.

Web design.

If your current design is years old, hastily put together and has an unprofessional logo or font, then compared to a more modern up-to-date site, the customer may decide that the modern looking one is more suitable for their needs. This is a psychographic based decision and may have no bearing on the quality of your goods and services, but is based on opinion and personality.

Don’t rush to change your website without doing a little customer and market research – some customers will be the opposite, instead trusting a site that looks a little more battle scarred. Think about what type of customer you are targeting and then do your research and plans accordingly.

No social sharing.

If you site contains informative content that is changed or added to regularly, then it makes sense to allow others to share it easily. This doesn’t mean you have to look after 10 different social platforms; just by adding a share button from Facebook or Google + to your pages, people are able to share it on their own social network page – thus showing their appreciation for the content. A ticker of how many ‘likes’ and +1’s will show your customers that this info or page was helpful to others, and put your name in front of their friends. If you have a commenting feature that is not utilised, consider disabling it as zero comments will act the same way as an empty restaurant, people will move on without giving it a chance.

Nowadays, word of mouth has spread to the internet, and with a plethora of social networks to use, it’s important not to over do it – stick to social networks that your customers would use.

Bad content.

Make sure that your content is easy to read. This may be a no brainer, but bad grammar and copy will cause some to consider whether your business is qualified to assist them! These days, bad spelling and grammar are everywhere, spell checkers have made people lazy about learning, so make sure you double check and even consult a copywriter for advice.

Having the same content across multiple pages is not only confusing for SEO purposes, but will make your website look hasty and disorganised. Your SEO company should be able to point you in the right direction with your menu system, simplicity is the key to useability. If you aren’t running a blog or any other type of regular content changes, then it can be a good idea to add recent reviews or industry news, so that your customers have an indication that your site is indeed, up to date.

Most modern internet users will search using dozens of keywords before awarding that all special click-through to a site. Once you have earned that position and gained that click, the process of converting a searcher into a customer has only just begun. Make sure your site is ready to receive guests and that the information and products you are offering are easy to search, read and purchase. And importantly, don’t forget to have clear contact details so that they know where to find you.

Currently only available in the USA and Japan, you do have the option of uploading your floor plan to Google for consideration, so it is only a matter of time before it’s fully rolled out here in Australia. Once it has been processed, the floor plan to your building will be visible to anyone searching on their Android device. This, teamed with Google Business Photos will make it more important than ever to have your Google Places listing up to date for SEO purposes. You can get started with this here: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/floorplans/

To use this new feature, you must have the most up-to-date version of Google Maps installed on your device, and have opted in to ‘My Location’ which will require a wi-fi connection or GPS turned on. Once inside a building with a floor plan on Maps, you will actually be able to see where you are in the building in relation to where you need to go. Another feature of the new version of Maps is ‘Latitude’ where you can invite other Google account holders by sms or email. Once they have accepted your invite and their phone’s GPS is turned on, you will be able to see where they are (Or at least, their phone!) in relation to you. Very handy if you are with a group of people meeting in a large building.

As this feature is in Beta and the locations are limited, it remains to be seen whether there will be a ‘directions’ feature as there is with Maps getting from A to B. Step by step navigation would be useful in foreign airports, and for those people that just cannot follow a map. The ability to search within the floor plan would also be a time saver if you have never been to a certain location before.

As floor plans get rolled out worldwide, there is certain to be more answers to these questions and more. In the meantime, have a look at Google’s informational video here:

1.Keyword stuffing.

So you’ve identified the keywords you would like to rank for, and all you need to do is make sure that they appear on your website in enough permutations, that search engines will deem the page ‘rankable’. What some backyard SEO providers will do is ‘stuff’ that keyword into your content so that the word loses all meaning. Not just for people reading the site, but for the search engines as well. All search engines can spot keyword stuffing a mile away, and will generally avoid ranking pages that show evidence of it. For example:

If you’re looking for a hairdryer, our salon can help you! You won’t find better hairdryers or cheaper hairdryers anywhere in Australia. Please browse our site for the perfect hairdryer! Our shop is so hairdryer friendly; you’ll think all we sell is hairdryers!!

2.Hidden text.

So you’ve decided to keyword stuff, but you don’t know where to put all those keywords, and you don’t want your site sounding a bit mental like the example above. The next step for the cowboy SEO is to hide the keywords in the background. This means changing the colour of the text to the same as the background, so that users will not see them. The problem is, robots and search engines can see them. If you right click on a page and select ‘view source’ you will be able to see them too. Your simple three paragraph of copy is suddenly accompanied by hundreds of keywords, all lurking in the background.

3.Forum Spam.

More than likely, you will have seen these on some websites that allow commenting on certain pages. There will be a few genuine replies and comments, and then out of nowhere, someone writes “Wow, great article, but you know what would make it better? Buying a hairdryer from Hairdryers R Us” and having the store name, or the keyword linked to their website. There are not-so-handy tools out there that will assist you with this dastardly deed, which is why the practice is so prevalent. This kind of flim-flam will not help your SEO.

4.Duplicate Content.

If your great website idea has already been done to death, but you fancy that you might be the whiz-kid that ‘makes it’, you might be tempted to have a look at other people’s sites to get an idea of what content to include. Before you know it, you’ve paraphrased a few pages here and there, and ‘borrowed’ an image or two, you even went as far as to copy and paste an entire paragraph. This is not quality content. Search engines are looking for original, good quality content that will benefit the many users that will be searching. If you directly copy or even just swap a few words around, the search engine robots will figure it out. It’s actually one of their basic functions. The site you ‘borrowed’ it from will have obviously been there first, so you definitely will not get any credit for it. More than likely, the style will not reflect your company and it will all sound a little patched together. Which it essentially is.

5. Cloaking, or Doorway pages.

Cloaking is a bit technical and therefore should be too hard for some SEO scammers. This is when a completely different website or page is shown to the public, but there is a ‘hidden’ one purely for the search engine robots. Doorway pages are when you have a ‘spam’ page that users have to endure before they get to your real content, if you have any. These pages usually contain heaps of keyword stuffed content that may be repeated in other pages on the site that it links to. Google especially has been de-listing pages of this ilk.

While it may be tempting to employ these tactics in an effort to achieve rankings for your website, understand that any higher ranking will be short lived and can end up hurting your site’s reputation permanently. Always ask an SEO professional for advice before undertaking your own campaigns, and always play by the rules.

Similar to Facebook Pages, everyone can now create a page for their business, local store, favourite band or sports team. You can add pages to your circles just as you can with individual people, and you can also start a ‘hangout’ and share posts.

Integration

Only a day or so old at the time of writing, it will be interesting to see the tools and features that Google Pages will have that are of benefit to businesses in particular. Already, there is a type of integration with Google Places, simply select “Local Business or Place” as your intended page type and you will see that the set up is similar to a Google Places listing, with it asking for hours of business, logos and contact info. In future, a full integration with Places or linking between the products seems likely.

Facebook Comparisons

One benefit of Facebook Pages that Google is yet to implement seems to be the ability to assign other users as administrators of the page. With Facebook there isn’t much harm in all employees using the same company account to post, it’s more for convenience, however with Google there are Gmail, Documents and Checkout details that are all linked, and sensitive information could accidentally be shared.

Direct Connect.

An important note for SEO providers, Google Plus Pages are already fully integrated into search results. There is already an option in a Google SERP to refine by ‘Social’ (Just click ‘more search tools’ on the left hand side menu when logged in), but now just by adding a ‘+’ in front of your search, you can automatically be taken to a Google Plus Page if it exists. Called ‘Direct Connect’, it is still in experimental stage so will not work with all Pages just yet, linking your website to your Page it seems, will increase the chances of it being picked up for ‘Direct Connect’. See it in action in the video below.

Customer engagement is more than just greeting your customers by name and being pleasant on the phone. If you have a Facebook, Twitter account or any other type of forum for customers to leave comments, then you need to figure out what ‘voice’ to use when you engage with them.

Look at your industry

The first thing to think about is the type of industry you are in. A take away food shop isn’t going to talk to their customers the same way a large public company would. Make sure your voice aligns with your company, your branding, your attitude and what goals you have for your social connections. You don’t want to alienate existing or potential customers, because as you may know, if you say something on the internet, it will come back to haunt or celebrate you in the future. Work out what you want from social networking, and create a presence that reflects you and your company.

Whose job is it anyway?

In 2009, a ‘rogue’ Domino’s employee made a video of the disgusting habits of staff in one of their USA stores, uploaded it to YouTube and destroyed the credibility of the brand as it went viral. Thankfully the CEO, armed with his PR team and SEO provider, went into reputation management mode and order was restored.

While you won’t always have control over people from the ‘outside’ who want to harm you, you can control who is in charge of officially engaging with customers. Whether it’s yourself, or a trusted customer service employee that has the right touch, you need to be aware of how complaints, compliments and comments are handled on your social networks. Bad language and grammar can turn customers off, as can late replies or ignoring them completely. Think about whether your voice is the voice of the brand; that is, faceless, or if you have a personality whom will represent you.

What is your message?

This builds on and combines the two points made previously; what is your company style, and who are we talking to and why? Some companies use Twitter and Facebook to spread promotions and competitions, while others use them to update customers on product updates and industry news. Less formal organisations will engage customers with games and quizzes. If you have a blog or community forum, think about what the aim of the conversation is, as you may well want something different to what you would reveal or say on Twitter for example.

As any business owner knows, reputation management is an ever growing responsibility. Choosing to connect with your customers online can be a great way to let them know that you value their business and feedback, but if the engagement falls into the wrong hands, or if you aren’t clear about your message, you could be wasting your time, if not hurting what you have already cultivated. Treat your customer engagement in social media the same way you would speaking to them in person or on the phone, in a professional, respectful way that reflects you and your company.

1. Different Locations.

You may have noticed that when you do a search in Google, it has your estimated location in the right hand menu. Google can figure out where you are by checking your IP address. Your Perth SEO may get different results from you if you are located elsewhere in the state or even across town.

This means that if you are searching for something that may have multiple locations, such as a bakery, your browser is more likely to show results closest or more convenient to your location, which is why Google Places listings are so important for businesses with a retail or physical location.

2. Web Browsing History.

The top search engines actually personalise your search results based on your preferences and browsing history unless you opt out. This will affect what ads you are shown both in SERPs and on the Display network (Where you will see ads on a website rather than the SERP.) as well as the natural or organic search results.

For example, if you are signed in to your Gmail or other Google product, your web history will be recorded unless you opt out. If you are not signed in, cookies will be added to your browser in order to keep track of you until you clear your cache or browsing history. You can read about this in more detail in our previous article “A new way to target customers.”

3. Universal Search Results.

In the last few years, search engines (Esp. Google and Bing) have been combining all the possible search results into one list. Places, News, Images, Video, Dictionary and even white papers will be interspersed with the general results. You can refine this into specific areas by clicking on the right hand side menu (In Google), such as ‘images’ and then back again by clicking on ‘everything’.

This means that again, depending on the first two reasons above that your results may be different; you may be seeing extra Places results making your listing either higher or lower.

4. Social Media.

Depending on your adoption of Google Plus or the use of the +1 button, your results can also be skewed by your friend’s behaviour on the internet. For example if someone in your Gmail contacts or chat list has clicked +1 on a search engine result that you may also be searching for, that particular result may appear higher than it would naturally because Google can see that one of your friends recommends it. You can stop this by signing out of your Google account before you search, as with point number 2.

5. Data Centre Discrepancies.

While Google continually updates its data centres and index, there is no way for you to choose which one you are seeing results from. For example, if your SEO’s browser IP is returning results from one data centre, yours may be returning results from a completely different one. One data centre may be still updating it’s index and for this reason, your keywords ranking may be one or two positions different. Some SEOs call this the ‘Google Dance’ and you will usually see your positions stabilise over time as the data centres catch up with updates.

So, when you understand all of the reasons why your rankings won’t be exactly the same between two computers, it gives you a good foundation with which to monitor and understand why some times your keywords may seem to bounce a little.

While some of them are out of your control, if you keep an eye on your browser history, and social media impact you can get a clearer picture of your rankings, however it does pay to take in the big picture.